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Business News & Trends

Tuesday, 30 December 2008

The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index Falls to a New All-Time Low in December

Lynn Franco

Dec. 30, 2008…The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index™, which had increased moderately in November, declined to a new all-time low in December. The Index now stands at 38.0 (1985=100), down from 44.7 in November. The Present Situation Index plummeted to 29.4 from 42.3 last month. The Expectations Index decreased to 43.8 from 46.2 in November.

The Consumer Confidence Survey™ is based on a representative sample of 5,000 U.S. households. The monthly survey is conducted for The Conference Board by TNS. TNS is the world’s largest custom research company. The cutoff date for December’s preliminary results was December 22nd.

Says Lynn Franco, Director of The Conference Board Consumer Research Center: “The further erosion of the Consumer Confidence Index™ reflects the rapid and steep deterioration of economic conditions that occurred in the fourth quarter of 2008. The Present Situation Index is now close to levels last seen in the months following the 1990-91 recession, but is not as low as levels reached during the 1981-82 recession. Declines in the Expectations Index appear to be moderating, but this index continues to hover at historical lows. Both sub-indexes bear careful over the next several months to see if they are starting to show signs of approaching a bottom. In the meantime, however, the overall economic outlook remains quite dismal for the first half of 2009, and only a modest recovery is expected in the second half.”

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Pew Research: Internet Overtakes Newspapers as News Source

The Internet, which emerged this year as a leading source for campaign news, has now surpassed all other media except television as a main source for national and international news.

Currently, 40% say they get most of their news about national and international issues from the internet, up from just 24% in September 2007. For the first time in a Pew survey, more people say they rely mostly on the internet for news than cite newspapers (35%). Television continues to be cited most frequently as a main source for national and international news, at 70%.

Read the complete research report here.

Monday, 29 December 2008

Resume Insights from a Professional Recruiter.

Nate Fischer, Senior Techical Recruiter with Sigma Systems sent us the following:

Nate Fischer

"I have been in the recruiting business for over ten years now, and my one huge pet peeve is the old outdated concept that one's resume should fit on a single piece of paper. This is the virtual age, and this outdated advice no longer applies. "

"When recruiters and HR professionals are so tied to job boards and google searches utilizing boolean searches and keywords to find the right candidates, it is imperative that these words that recruiters are looking for appear in your resume. If you are limiting the information on your resume to keep it to one page, you seriously risk the possibility of being missed, or being placed lower in someone's search list because of your short resume. I'm not saying write a 10 page resume, but trying to fit ten to twenty years of experience on a single page is just as ridiculous. "

Thanks, Nate!

Sunday, 28 December 2008

Fast Company Profiles Next-gen Job Sites

Kate Rockwood reports these next-gen job sites seek to replace executive-search firms and spirit-crushing job boards with cash incentives, matching algorithms, and social networks.

Money Talks: NotchUp

Multilevel Networking: Blue Chip Expert

eHarmony for Paychecks: Jobfox
(Listen to Peter Clayton's interview with the CEO of JobFox, Rob McGovern)

Pay It Forward: H3.com

Read Kate's complete article here.

Technorati Tags: Fast Company, NotchUp, Blue Chip Expert, JobFox, H3.com, Web 2.0 job sites

Saturday, 27 December 2008

Which CEOs Have Been Naughty or Nice According to Their Employees?

Robert Hohman

From the Glassdoor.com blog: It’s that time of year where we’re making our list and checking it twice trying to find out which CEO’s rated on Glassdoor.com have been naughty or nice in the eyes of their employees this year.

Genentech’s Art Levinson comes in as the #1 rated CEO (with at least 50 employees) with a 92% approval rating while and Office Depot‘s Steve Odland is the least popular CEO with the highest disapproval rating of 80%.

NICE: Coming in at second place after Art Levinson is Apple’s Steve Jobs with a 90% approval rating. And despite a volatile year, four out of five Goldman Sachs’ employees approve of the job Lloyd Blankfein is doing.

Read the complete blog post here.

Listen to Peter Clayton's interview with the CEO of Glassdoor, Robert Hohman, in this podcast.

Tuesday, 09 December 2008

I Bet Walter Wriston is Glad He's Dead

"Capital goes where it's welcome and stays where it's well treated." Walter B. Wriston

Holiday Toy Train Exhibit, Citigroup Center

Holiday Trains at Citigroup Center

When "The Citi Never Sleeps" ad campaign was first launched in 1978, Walter Wriston was running the place, and the motto had real meaning. Wriston was highly regarded, as was the institution he lead. Citibank / Citicorp was a cherished brand by its employees and a respected competitor in the financial services industry. (The Citi Never Sleeps campaign was the brainchild of advertising legend Robert Wilvers).

Cut to today. Although the current leadership of the company has recycled "The Citi Never Sleeps" slogan, it has completely lost its meaning and aspirational message. The image that comes to mind today of The Citi That Never Sleeps is a demoralized, poorly run behemoth losing billions of dollars chasing subprime riches, cutting thousands of jobs while trying to stay afloat.

In my opinion, the following is a typical move by a company with uninspired leaders disconnected from their employees:

Dec. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Citigroup Inc., the bank that’s eliminating 52,000 jobs after getting a $45 billion government bailout, canceled its sponsorship of a New York holiday toy-train exhibit visited by more than 125,000 people a year. Dunham Studios, the Pottersville, New York-based operator of the 750-square-foot model railroad, was notified of Citigroup’s decision last month, co-owner Clarke Dunham said in an interview. That means the free show that first went on display in 1987 at the Citigroup Center lobby may reach the end of the line on Jan. 2 unless another sponsor steps up or the bank reconsiders, he said. It also means Citigroup will save about $240,000.

“The difficult decision to discontinue this sponsorship was part of Citi’s ongoing expense-reduction efforts,” Citigroup said in an e-mailed statement. Chief Executive Officer Vikram Pandit, 51, announced on Nov. 21 that he wants to cut costs by about $2 billion per quarter starting next year." (You can read the complete text of Bradley Keoun's reporting here.)

Blah blah blah, Vikram. I've been engaged in a number of interviews focused on the importance of brands. Two recent examples -- John Gerzema, author of The Brand Bubble; and David Henderson, whose book, The Media Savvy Leader was just released. According to David "82% of shareholder value is intangible." According to John, one-third of all shareholder value is attributed to "brand."

So here's an idea I'd like your help with: I have fond memories of the train exhibit at Citigroup Center. If we could find 24,000 Citibank employees willing to donate $10 each into a fund to "keep the trains running," it might give the employees of this beleaguered institution something to be proud of, and smile about. I bet through Twitter, LinkedIn, Xing, and Facebook we could mobilize enough Citibankers to take up the cause. Next year, the exhibit could be "in memory of Walter B. Wriston." The fund could be set-up as an old fashioned "Christmas Savings Account." What do you think?

The Holiday Toy Train exhibit is operating this year at Citicorp Center. If you're in the City and have young children, its well worth a visit. Disclosure: From 1984 until 2000 I made a number of marketing, corporate image and employee motivation films for Citi, and produced an internal sales radio show "The Citibanking News Network" for twelve years.

Monday, 08 December 2008

The Conference Board Employment Trends Index Signals More Strong Employment Declines to Come

Gad Levanon

(December 8, 2008) The Conference Board Employment Trends Index (ETI)™ declined further in November. The index fell to 102.9, down 1.6 percent from the October revised figure of 104.5, and down over 13 percent from a year ago.

"Thus far the U.S. economy has lost 1.9 million jobs and the declines in the ETI suggest job losses could very well surpass 3 million by mid 2009," said Gad Levanon, Senior Economist at The Conference Board. "The continued deterioration in the labor market will exert significant downward pressure on wages," noted Levanon.

The 16 month-long decline in the Employment Trends Index (ETI)™ is seen in all eight of its components, most notably over the past six months in temporary-help hires and part-time workers for economic reasons, notes Levanon.

Read the complete report here

Tuesday, 02 December 2008

Why Shally is Shally

Have you ever wondered what tools professional recruiters use to conduct a job search?

Shally Steckerl

Here's a serious example: Our good friend, Shally Steckerl, talent acquisition consultant, strategist, founder and Chief CyberSleuth of JobMachine fame, has just relased a new "Cheatsheet" - Easy Ways To Source Passive Candidates from Blogs in 10 Minutes or Less with New Methods!

Yes, you're looking at a search string typed into a google search field.

Shally explains: "Why it works is because there are some very common elements in blogs. For example, most blog platforms allow readers to leave "comments" and publish RSS feeds of the content of the blog. If we find pages with a comments section, and an RSS feed and perhaps links to pages such as archives of posts, and "trackbacks" then we probably have found a blog! Add to that the fact that you are searching for words similar to CV which of course include resume and vitae, and you have a search for resumes posted on peoples' blogs! The - terms eliminate garbage results like for example job postings, etc. "

"All you have to do is change the Java and Websphere to words like Nurse and ER for example, and you have a similar search for nurse resumes! Go ahead, try it, then pick up a copy of the CheatSheet so you can get all four pages of hacks like that one. All in all, not counting the variations you can come up with on your own, there are over 50 more hacks like this one in the CheatSheet so don't be left out and get in on the action!" I am particularly interested in the statement, "all you have to do."